Thursday, June 15, 2017

Slow Poetry in America, A Poetry Quarterly: #4-6

CHASE
SCENE

we’re playing chess on the unfinished concourse
to nowhere. you take off your gas mask and look at me. a train slides under us,
the heart flutters, the homeless who sleep in waves around us. are we homeless,
you say, the city unridden in your face, the lines unbuilt. you want to
organize the ocean. unwrap the fish, i say. you unwrap the fish, and the fish
squints. we begin where we are. the king is dead, and the queen is dead, and
the night is fat with pawns. (Ryan Eckes)

There
is something ultimately graceful about a small pamphlet, larger than the single
poem, yet more compact than a chapbook, allowing for a pocket of work by a
single author. The simplicity of the pamphlet form allows for a good enough
selection of work to get a sense of what the author is doing. I’ve been aware
of the work of Ryan Eckes for some time now, and have been curious about what
he’s been working on lately; Fan Wu is an entirely new discovery, and a
delightful one. And then, of course, there is the tug that comes through
reading a small selection of previously unpublished poems (all dated 2014, but
for a single 2015 poem) by the now-late Joanne Kyger: